Posts Tagged ‘Climate Protection’

Sustainable Nantucket is pleased to announce that its Sense of Place Film series is returning on Saturday, October 29th with the screening of Vanishing of the Bees. This Film Series is co-sponsored with Nantucket Atheneum and is held once a month in the Great Hall of the Atheneum. All movies begin at 7PM, admission is free, light refreshments are served, and a Q&A period often follows. For more information on this series, click here. A full list of films for the 2011/2012 season will be posted soon – stay tuned! (more…)

On November 17, 2010 the Nantucket Board of Selectmen met to determine adoption of the Climate Plan. The result of this meeting was a decision to take some time for the Nantucket Planning and Economic Development Commission to further develop the Plan, and present that plan for review at the February, 2011 Commission meeting. If approved, it will be referred to the Selectmen for their approval/adoption. The Selectmen affirmed their commitment to adopt a plan during the current fiscal year-by June 30, 2011. We will keep you posted on further developments.

Our Sense of Place Documentary Film Series is co-sponsored by the Nantucket Athenuem. The series runs September through May, and films are shown once a month in the Great Hall of the Nantucket Atheneum. The film series focuses on issues of sustainability, environment, economy, agriculture and more. We are proud to be able to present Nantucketers with some of the finest award-winning documentaries that address issues that reflect Sustainable Nantucket’s mission.

Light refreshments and a Q&A or discussion period featuring local experts typically follow each film. The film series has become a wonderful community-building activity for our off-season population and visitors alike.

2010/2011 Film Schedule:

Films start at 7PM, admission is free, and all are welcome. Light refreshments are served.

October 22 – No Impact Man : Colin Beavan decides to completely eliminate his personal impact on the environment for the next year.

November 19 – Dirt! The Movie : DIRT! The Movie–directed and produced by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow–takes you inside the wonders of the soil. It tells the story of Earth’s most valuable and underappreciated source of fertility–from its miraculous beginning to its crippling degradation.

December 10 – Fuel : Eleven years in the making, FUEL is the in-depth personal journey of filmmaker and eco-evangelist Josh Tickell, who takes us on a hip, fast-paced road trip into America’s dependence on foreign oil.

January 14 – Tapped : Is access to clean drinking water a basic human right, or a commodity that should be bought and sold like any other article of commerce? Stephanie Soechtig’s debut feature is a unflinching examination of the big business of bottled water.

February 11 – The End Of The Line : The world’s first major documentary about the devestating effect of overfishing premiered at Sundance Film Festival.

March 18 – Gasland : The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a “Saudia Arabia of natural gas” just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination.

April 29 – Fresh : FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet.

The First Step – Nantucket Joins the Cities for Climate Protection Campaign

In 2008 —Sustainable Nantucket formally requested that the Town of Nantucket join the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) Cities for Climate Protection Campaign. This request was unanimously granted by the Board of Selectmen. Nantucket joined over twenty-seven participating communities in Massachusetts alone, including, among others: Amherst, Barnstable, Boston, Falmouth, Gloucester, Hull, Kingston, Newburyport, Newton, Northampton, Salem, Somerville, Springfield, Williamstown and Worcester.

What is the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI’s) Cities for Climate Protection Campaign (CCP)?

The International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI’s) Cities for Climate Protection Campaign (CCP) is a performance-oriented campaign that offers a framework for local governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve livability within their municipalities. It is designed to educate and empower local governments worldwide to take action on climate change.

What are the Milestones of the ICLEICities for Climate Protection Campaign?

Milestone One: Conduct a baseline greenhouse gas emissions inventory for the entire community and municipal operations.

Milestone Two: Set an emissions reduction target.

Milestone Three: Develop and adopt a local action plan or a collection of initiatives to reach the target reductions. These initiatives will include finding efficiency and technological improvements available to the municipality.

Milestone Four: Implement actions. This milestone involves municipal government to formally adopt individual emission reduction initiatives. Further, various municipal departments may be called upon to coordinate and implement the adopted initiatives.

It is a collection of initiatives to reach the target reductions. These initiatives will address both primary and secondary sources of carbon emissions, and include finding efficiency and technological improvements available to the municipality. Areas addressed will include buildings, (Historic District Commission guidelines; incentives for energy efficiency and renewable energy sources) lighting, town fleet, public transportation, community policies (e.g., idling policy), life cycle cost analysis for purchases, composting program, gray water /lo-flow toilet program, bio-degradable plastic trash bags; biker/pedestrian friendly community; public education campaign for the environment; school curriculum…

Why create a Climate Protection Action Plan?

There are many benefits economic and environmental benefits to creating a Climate Protection Action Plan including

Nantucket has a strong motivation for joining this Campaign and making a definitive commitment to reducing fossil-fuel use and carbon emissions. Unlike many of these other towns and cities, our unique geographical situation makes us particularly vulnerable to the potential effects of climate change – advanced erosion should sea-levels rise as predicted, and devastating storm damage if the wind and water currents are altered. Yet it also gives us access to significant renewable energy resources (wind-power and tidal-power) and makes energy independence a real possibility for us in the not-too-distant future. Completion of the Climate Protection Action Plan will fulfill criteria set by the Massachusetts Green Communities Act, thereby significantly increasing the Town of Nantucket’s eligibility to receive state funding toward renewable energy development on Nantucket.

Our Climate Initiative includes a campaign to educate and raise awareness in our community around municipal policies in the Climate Plan and community-wide adjustments to that will be necessary to achieve our emissions reductions targets.

This campaign is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2010 and will include press releases, publications, community forums and informational panel discussions.

Review of the Plan draft and laying of implementation groundwork with Town departments

An education / outreach initiative in the summer of 2010 for the Climate Plan. This will include community forums, guest speakers from other communities, and printed information about the specifics of the plan as an effort to help residents and visitors understand the complex nature of Climate Change and the positive steps the Town of Nantucket is planning to adopt.

Passage of the Climate Protection Plan

The Climate Plan is focused around the municipality acting as both a leader by example – reducing its own carbon emissions– and as a catalyst –by implementing both policy changes and community-wide education– to bring about substantial change on-island, and to realize our vision. We envision the island as a carbon neutral entity and an energy producer utilizing our strongest available source of renewable energy –wind, while reducing our other primary and secondary sources of carbon emissions as much as possible.

We seemost, if not all,municipal and individual vehicles being electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles within ten years – brought about by marketplace demand, and municipal regulation. These vehicles could avail themselves of clean & renewable energy, and would act as a reservoir and battery for the local electricity supply. This Plan would provide the added bonus of supporting the local economy by providing additional local jobs and, ideally, making us an eco-tourism destination, as well as –the electric vehicle element – helping to greatly decrease carbon emissions and traffic noise and pollution. We also envision producing as much of our food on-island as possible, given our natural limitations.

Currently, many opportunities and policy implementations are coming together making this the perfect time to put into practice a climate plan for our community. Drafting a Climate Plan qualifies us for “Smart Growth Points” in Massachusetts, improving the Town’s “credit score” with the state, which increases our eligibility for grants and lower-interest rates on long term municipal loans for capital projects.

Key criteria for funding for renewable energy and energy–efficiency projects ($10 million will be available for grants, annually, for Towns in Massachusetts with populations under 35,000), as provided for in the Massachusetts Green Communities Act, include completing and implementing a Climate Protection Action Plan such as the one we are currently drafting, and creating as-of-right siting for renewable energy projects in designated locations, an element which are incorporated into the Plan.

In Progress: Achieving the 3rd Milestone of the Campaign, designing aClimate Protection Action Plan for Nantucket.

Achievement of these milestones fulfills two of the criteria outlined in the Green Communities Act for Nantucket to be considered forupcoming “Green Communities” funding from the state of Massachusetts – which could provide significant funding from the state toward renewable energy initiatives on the island.

In our early years Sustainable Nantucket focused on developing transportation solutions to meet the needs of a growing community while preserving what makes us different. We conduct research, participate in work groups and offer support for initiatives that seek this balance.

Research

We sponsored, in collaboration with the Nantucket Land Council and the Nantucket Community Association, a study called, “Optimal Transportation Carrying Capacity for Nantucket” (March, 2002), which commissioned transportation experts and an economist to analyze current traffic patterns and future trends. Study findings have been used by the Traffic Congestion Plan Work Group and other planners on the island. A two-year update of this study was completed in 2004.

Work Groups

Members of our organization participated in the following efforts:

Traffic Congestion Plan Work Group

Home Rule Petitions for Traffic Mitigation

Wheels Heels and Pedals Website production

5-Year Plan to Mitigate Traffic Congestion

Regional Transportation Plan as member of NP&EDC

Voluntary Noise Abatement Program at the Airport

Recommendations for the new Airport Terminal

Support Initiatives

Sustainable Nantucket is often called upon to support grant applications, special legislation or local efforts to implement character-based transportation solutions. Some initiatives for which we have advocated by letters of support or other help:

• Grant to conduct a pilot program for Cape Air to use larger aircraft for some Nantucket routes in order to reduce numbers of operations while providing efficient travel options
• Special legislation to restore funding to regional transit authorities in the Commonwealth that would enable the NRTA, our local public bus network, to restore routes and possibly expand service
• Grant to conduct research by Cape Air and the Nantucket Memorial Airport that would identify regional service needs of the island
• Testimony before state legislators in support of Home Rule Petition to design auto limitation strategy.